By Opeyemi Naimot Dawodu

In every democratic society, from the jurisprudential perspective, there are certain ideals that must be present one of which is social justice. These ideals are aspirations and the nearer a society is to these aspirations, the better the society is. In a country like Nigeria, pension is one of the social objectives in partial fulfillment of the ideals present in Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria (as amended 2011) and as such how this ideal is achieved is required to be examined. This research work analysed pension, how it differs from annuity or gratuity or other similar terms; the essence of pensions, the various classes of pensions.

The doctrinal approach of information gathering were employed and comparative, content analysis and historical methods of research were used relying on primary sources like legislations, case laws and secondary sources such as textbooks, journals, seminar papers, newspaper articles and online sources.

It was discovered that despite the New Pension Reform Act 2014, there are still delays in in the payment of pensions, also some states are yet to fully incorporate the provisions of the new Act on pension. It was found that there is no central record keeping agency for pension data; no electronic database for pension and pensioners go through cumbersome verification process every time pensions are to be paid. It was also discovered that pension administration is still bedeviled with corruption.

The study was concluded on the note that despite the provisions of the Pension Reform Act 2014, there are still challenges facing pension administration in Nigeria and it was proposed amongst other things that there should be proper implementation of the pension laws, the tool ‘tracing’ under the law of trust should be used as a mechanism to curb corrupt practices under pension administration in Nigeria.

Source @SSRN